There are two major concerns in software, performance and legibility. These concerns are somewhat orthogonal but neither can be abandoned, and the challenge is

There are two major concerns in software, performance and legibility. These concerns are somewhat orthogonal but neither can be abandoned, and the challenge is balancing them. By contrast in bridge-building (etc.) the two main concerns (performance and aesthetics) have been largely separated by discipline, into engineering and architecture, the former a purely mechanical discipline, the latter almost entirely artistic. The main result of Modernism has been the subservience of the latter to the former, and in general the almost wholescale abandonment of aesthetic concerns. This is starting to come apart a little bit as people realize that this separation is unhealthy, and maybe we shouldn't build brutal, ugly flyovers through our cities because they have measurable effects on happiness, and thus property values, etc. (i.e., aesthetic concerns have functional consequences). Similarly I think many software "engineers" take a long time to realize that one of their main functions is writing code that others can read; this is an aesthetic, artistic discipline that I think many developers reject as outside their domain. This, too, is starting to come apart as we slowly figure out that code's maintainability is a key determinant of its long-term success - that is, aesthetic concerns have functional consequences.